Botany Manor Review - Delightfully satisfying to explore
To be honest, as members of the video game media, we get a ton of letters touting "cozy" gaming experiences. Alongside lo-fi horror, it has been one of the most popular trends in the independent film industry for the past several years.
Any games that advertise themselves as such will have a difficult time capturing my interest because the genre they belong to isn't usually my thing in the first place.
To my astonishment, I not only relished Botany Manor but also found it to be so captivating that I completed it in a single day.
How does your garden grow?
Set in a grand ancient mansion, Botany Manor is a puzzle-based adventure game. It's like Resident Evil, but nicer and more refined.
As the owner of the mansion, a retired botanist named Arabella, you take on the task of documenting the precise growing techniques of twelve uncommon plant species, the seeds of which you have collected throughout your travels across the world.
The manor is divided into various zones, each containing multiple rooms or areas of the grounds. Two or three plant riddles are located in each zone, and these groupings make up a chapter in the book. Once you've grown every plant in the chapter, the estate's next portion will become accessible.
Although you go through the chapters in a sequential fashion, the order in which you answer the puzzles pertaining to each plant is not. Actually, determining which of the many hints you'll find in each section corresponds to the page of each plant in the chapter is a significant portion of solving each problem.
Although the techniques for determining which plants to grow vary greatly, you will generally be reading notes, handling objects, performing some basic math, and moving items from one place to another.
Despite my tendency to become easily frustrated, I can also be incredibly persistent, and the ingenuity and variety of Botany Manor's puzzles amazed me throughout the entire process. I never felt frustrated when I got stuck; instead, I always felt like I was about to make progress if I could just line the clues correctly.
The only true user interface in Botany Manor is the book itself. It logs the clues you find and notes which room they are in, but it doesn't allow you to access or review the clues. Initially, I thought this was bothersome, but as time went on, I realized how much This design decision compels you to interact with and enjoy the estate's spaces.
In the game Botany Manor, sitting on a seat for more than a minute earns you an achievement. It invites you to savor the exquisite ambiance and acknowledge the rich past of its location.
If these design decisions still irritate you, you can always snap screenshots or use your phone's camera to record contextual cues. The only true concession to player convenience is the sprint button, but most of the time I felt like activating it went against the whole experience.
Though it seems corny, the manor is the main supporting character in the game. A careful examination of each plant's design can be essential to completing its riddle, and even the books, letters, cards, and paintings that aren't immediately related to the clues can reveal bits and pieces of Arabella's own tale.
With silver bells, and cockle shells, and pretty maids all in a row
Even though the mysteries and investigation of Botany Manor are pleasantly fulfilling, they definitely wouldn't have been enough to keep me interested until the very end if Arabella's life story hadn't been revealed in the margins.
This is the story of an English single woman in the 19th century who aspired to be a scholar, without giving anything away. I thought the journey the game takes via these intentional themes and subtexts was very amazing.
The degree to which some of these issues are kept subtextual will surely irritate some people, and given the discourse around video games at the time of its release, others are probably going to be extremely venomous about it, even bringing up certain themes. Though I admit I'm not really qualified to comment on such matters, I believe Botany Manor handles these aspects in a way that is tonally consistent with its setting and general atmosphere.
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